Ukraine government's military officers who requested asylum in Russia sent back to Ukraine

KIEV, August 07. /ITAR-TASS/. Mystery shrouds the impending fate of nearly 200 Ukrainian soldiers who returned home after crossing the border into Russia, fleeing fighting in the restive east Ukrainian Luhansk region, a civil activist told a television channel on Thursday.

For reaching the capital, Kiev, and ordered onbound to another destination, the 195 men refused further travel and left the wagons carrying them, the activist added after reaching Kiev railway station and reporting that the men had been ordered onward.

“The command wanted to dispatch the soldiers to a military unit in the [northern] city of Chernigov,” he told a Ukrainian public service broadcasting channel, adding that “when a locomotive was being replaced at a technical stopover in Kiev, they refused to go further and left the wagons”.

Relatives of the 72nd Ukrainian Brigade servicemen reflected the confusion, one reporting that “soldiers are being delivered somewhere we do not know.”

TV footage took the mystery further, announcing that the destination had been changed to the Kiev region city of Belaya Tserkov, where the soldiers' further fate would become clear.